Where do AppImages store data?

Using AppImages
1

Where do AppImages store data? Is data stored the system such that data remains after removing an AppImage, is data stored inside the AppImage itself, or is every AppImage different?

2

Hello @schnappi, AppImages are just self-mounting filesystem images that execute whatever their author has decided to put inside. The application inside an AppImage will hence store data wherever the application would store data if it wasn’t inside an AppImage. Typically somewhere in $HOME.

3

Removing the AppImage will not remove any data the application has written.

4

Hi. I have a question that I see as similar to this question and your answer. I have installed an Appimage of Thunderbird. It somehow never saw the Default Profile that was stored under /home/user/.thunderbird. Based on your answer it should have. All of my email accounts had to be installed and Address Book Imported. My Message Filters I am still working on how to get them working.
Given what you say I must have created some new settings/profile under my ~/.thunderbird folder and I need to know more about that. Can you explain it for me?

1 Like
5

The fact that an appliaction comes in AppImage format does not change where the application stores its data. So this would be a question for the Thunderbird developers.

6

I thank you for your post. I had actually gotten mixed up as to where the each parallel installs. I am glad to hear that Appimages operate the same way as any direct install. I am using many Appimages on an older install and they have given me the opportunity to not have to keep upgrading beyond where my clients are comfortable with.
I want to thank the developers and their efforts are much appreciated.
Robert

7

I would like to knoe whether you have found the data where it is just like the solution post#2. By the way, I don’t…

  • App: Linux_MeowSQL_0.4.8-x86_64.AppImage( store in /home/kearney/Downloads/)
  • Situation: I use it and create a seesion called “Temp” and save it. Then I close the app and run it again, the sessino “Temp” still there. However, when I use the root to run the app, there is nothing. So I wonder where the data is. I look through about “appimage” or “Meow” in /home/kearney/ or /usr/share/. I found nothing…
    I still confused…I look in the website doucment or github issue, ask some people in Chinese web. It seems a stupid question for me…
8

Alright, I use KFind and find the datafile in /home/kearney/.config/ragnar-lodbrok/MeowSQL.conf created by the app run by kearney. And the root datafile int /root/.config/ragnar-lodbrok/MeowSQL.conf
Sorry… The search funttion in Dolphin is haha, my mistake.

9

So, based on this, it means, if I need to remove an AppImage totally with the data it created, I should need to look for where it would store the data if it were installed in a separate format, like rpm or deb or apt, etc.

10

Yes.

If you don’t like that, you can check out the portable mode.

https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/portable-mode.html